1. Technical Field
The embodiments herein are generally related to an information processing system and particularly related to a method and system for managing and controlling the digital documents and drawings and their associated contents. The embodiments herein are more particularly related to a method and system for automatic processing, extracting, monitoring, tracking and controlling the technical documents and drawings and their exchange between the various entities which are internal and external to an organization.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the execution of a large scale project in infrastructure domain as in Energy, Transportation, Resources, Industrial Infrastructure, Residential Infrastructure, Process Plants, Defense, Medicine and Healthcare, etc., various organizations and individuals provide the services and equipments required for a successful execution of the projects.
For the successful execution of the project, these organizations and individuals exchange a large amount of data including technical drawings and documents. Correspondences and Letters, Minutes of Meetings, Design Change Notes, Technical Queries and their responses, Reviews, Comments, Audits and associated business documents and data in between themselves to enable conceptualization, design, development and commissioning of these projects. The volume and type of information exchanged is very large and the management of this information in a controlled and systematic manner is critical for the successful execution of the project complying with the constraints as mentioned in the project plan and contract documents.
As the organizations and individuals participating in the project also share the risks associated with the project delay in form of penalties and liquidated damages as specified in the contract, the management of these records assumes a paramount importance during the project closure. If there are any claims or counterclaims, deductions and any other form of liability be financial or otherwise during the project closure, these records serve as an evidence on the basis of which the work was executed and assist in a fair-settlement either mutually and/or using arbitration or legal remedies as provided by the law.
To manage this large amount of varied data that is being exchanged between the various institutions or departments or people or organizations involved in the execution of the project, there are rules and guidelines that are agreed between the participating institutions or departments or people or organizations related to the need, identification, generation, quality checks, interchange, monitoring and tracking of all project information.
There are dedicated departments and people who perform the operations related to the management of information and data in compliance with the guidelines and standards for information management as has been agreed between the various parties involved in the project.
These departments and people normally referred as “Document Control Centers” and “Document Controllers” respectively in the industrial parlance, work to ensure a compliance with the standards of document control as has been set by the project authorities.
In certain cases, the document control centers also perform the work associated with the translation of language when the participating agencies are from various lingual backgrounds and other general administrative activities.
The work related to the document control, largely encompasses the operations related to the receipt, dispatch, acknowledgement, quality checks, internal forwarding to the concerned people and managing records of all data interchanged data including the dates and reference number of letters for ensuring transparency, traceability, search and reporting.
In the earlier days, when the information interchanged was on paper, the document control center was responsible for the management of the hardcopy of documents. They used to receive the information along with the cover note referred as Document Transmittal Note (DTN) with a unique number, along with a set of hardcopy documents, each having their own identification. The details related to the identification were listed in the documents in the formats known as Title Blocks for drawings and Cover-Sheets for Documents that usually follows a predictable structure and information which many a times is standardized for particular projects. The document controllers are used to validate the information received as listed in the Document Transmittal Note with the enclosures, and ensure that all the information mentioned in DTN matches with that received. If there are any discrepancies, letters are issued to the originators listing the discrepancy and seeking remedy. If the things are in order, then quality checks are performed on the documents and per project and organizational policies. When the entire information received is passed successfully through all their quality tests, the document is updated in the document control registers by putting in the dates, and DTN references and other information extracted from the drawings and documents. Then the received information is circulated to the concerned people, and the superseded drawings and documents are withdrawn from circulation to ensure that all people receive the latest available information and issue the acknowledgement to the sender of information. The document control center also publishes the reports and sends reminders to the internal and external agencies about the items that are expected and/or overdue for expediting the overall information required for the execution of the project. The document control centers also perform the reconciliation of their records with those of suppliers to ensure the integrity of their records. These records serve as a place where the organizational intellectual property is captured and maintained. This information can be leveraged for newer projects by learning from the mistakes. The document control center hence for all the projects also maintain a library of these records. These records also provide the entire information which is important for the operation and maintenance of the assets created during the life time of the asset.
With the advances in the technology, paper based records are now generated from computer outputs and are exchanged using the appropriate methods for the digital exchange of information as E-mails (with files enclosed as attachments) or FTP Servers or Web-based applications. Usually the files that are exchanged are in un-editable formats as Portable Document Formats (PDF), TIFF Image etc., unless they are final deliverables from one agency to another.
Further, the manual paper based registers have been replaced with digital registers that is maintained in software spreadsheet application and/or databases applications.
Some firms have come up with the web-based collaborative workspaces where all agencies involved in the project can come and upload all the information or data for the specified project. Such applications can be of web-based applications hosted either by one of the project agencies and/or commercial firms offering such services. The inherent drawback associated with such applications and methodology is that all the project organizations end up with the duplication of data entry in both their internal as well as the common system. The firms have further come up with Application Programming Interfaces (API) for their applications to reduce the double entry of data but the usage of large number of varied systems in the industry and lack of standardization imply that such integrations are practically never executed.
In a practical scenario, almost all the projects ends using an application which is standardized for the exchanges of data and documents across the organizations primarily E-mail—working on standard protocols and incase the data size is too high to be handled by E-mail—due to attachment size limitations some standardized methodology for file exchange such as FTP or HTTP applications.
The impact of the above lack of standards for in formation exchange in the industry due to the varied reason simply that the document control processes largely remain the same in terms of document control methodology and standards that were applicable to paper based documents. The challenge is further exacerbated by the fact that the document control standards that are applicable to the management of project information vary from project to project and are a function of standards that are agreed between the project owners and participating agencies. The abovementioned facts imply that the work related to the document control largely remains manual where the document controller performs the various responsibilities according to the project and organizational requirements and is aided by software tools such as email systems and databases. However, the quality checks and data entry aspects etc. largely remain manual in nature and are error-prone.
One of the existing prior arts provides software based automatic document processing and management services. This prior art essentially provides an ability to scan the documents, to extract information from forms and then stores the same in a database. This prior art provides services in terms of Form Processing such as Invoice Processing, Classification of documents for human review, sending and receiving electronic invoices, etc., but is not capable of processing the technical drawings and documents and associated functions as detection of decision stamps put on drawings etc cannot be handled. The prior art is primarily concerned with the extraction of the information from the scanned documents and automatically pre-fills the fields as available in the software program to reduce the human effort involved in data entry. The human intervention is however expected in reviewing the information filled in the software forms, validating the same and then submitting the same into the software as ERP. The Prior Art doesn't discuss the complexity associated with the varied project data management standards that are applicable to the projects including the methodologies that are specifically required for extracting the meaningful information from decision stamps that are used in the engineering projects and its correlation with the project based standards including quality checks on the existing files, the prior history of the document exchanges performed on the specific records and associated aspects.
Another prior art discloses a method and system for monitoring and detecting the documents sent and received over E-mails. This prior art monitors the incoming and outgoing mails, compares the same with the documents stored in a database, and finally generates a report. The prior art is related to the exchange of files via E-mail. When a response E-mail is received on the basis of comparison and difference, the prior art does not discuss the automatic processing of the attached documents in the E-mail.
Another prior art discusses the challenges associated with the processing of technical engineering drawings and documents, particularly the ones which are scanned from the paper documents and converted into digital files. The current innovation also improves the method for extraction of meaningful information from the scanned technical drawings by compensating for the errors associated with scanning and non-compliance with the standards related to the technical drawings and documents in a project.
Hence, there is a need for a system and method for automatically controlling the digital documents exchanged during the execution of a project communicated via various methods including E-mails to the various organizations. Further, there is also a need for a system for processing the data extracted from the various digital files that are received and in compliance with the project and organizational standards to automate the document control processes of the organization.
The above mentioned shortcomings, disadvantages and problems are addressed herein and which will be understood by reading and studying the following specification.